j

Works by Danilo Kis

in English Translation . ATOMB FOR
BORIS DAVIDOVICH
Early Sorrows
v
The Encyclopedia of the Dead
Garden, Ashes DANILO KIS
Homo Poeticus
Hourglass Introduction by Joseph Brodsky
ATomb for Boris Davidovich Afterword by William T. Vollmann
Translated by Duska Mikic-Mitchell

DALKEY ARCHIVE PRESS

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Originally published by Harcourt, Inc., 1978

English tranSlation copyright 1978 by Harcourt, Inc.

Published by arrangement with Harcourt, Inc.

Inuoouction copyright 1980 by Joseph Brodsky

Afterword copyright 2001 by William T. Vollmann

First Dalkey Archive edition, 2001

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

KiS, Danilo, 1935-1989

[Grobnica za Borlsa Davidovica. English]
A tomb for Boris Davidovich I by Danilo KiS; uanslated by Duska Mikic-Mitchell ;

~tom&
inuoouction by Joseph Brodsky; afterword by William T. Vollmann.-lst Dalkey
Archive ed. .
p. em.

ISBN 1-56478-273-5 (all<. paper)

I. Mikic-Mitche1l, Duska. II. TItle.

PG1419.21.18 G713 2001

tor; BOM
Dcwi,dovitJ"

891.8'2J54-dc21

2001028044

Partially funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. a federal agency and the
Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.

Dalkey Archive Press

9
lII.oo.tI r ~j, .. . I I

www.dalkeyarchive.com ,._ 1MI AIT'

Printed on permanent/durable acid-free paper and bound in the United States of America.
3TEVENSON LIBRARY P.lA~D COLLEGE
Annandale-on-Hudson N.Y12504
{ 72 ] A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH { IN MEMORY OF LEONID SE]KA ]

(his wife had died in the prison camp, and his son had been
killed in action), so Frau Else reverted to her native lan
guage: her dry, purple lips were fervently whispering a
prayer in German. Meanwhile, the devout woman of Tumen
was praying in Russian for the soul of the servant of God,

~tOInt
Karl Georgievich, whose name was written in gold letters
on the funeral wreath ordered by the hospital collective.
This took place in the Tumen cemetery on the bitterly
cold afternoon of December 7, 1956.
''"r; iJ0r:i8.
Distant and mysterious are the ways that brought to
gether the Georgian murderer and Dr. Taube. As distant and
mysterious as the ways of God. Dr%_ith
History recorded him as Novsky, which is only a pseudonym
(or, more precisely, one of his pseudonyms). But what im
mediately spawns doubt is the question: did history really
record him? In the index of the Granat Encyclopedia, among
the 246 authorized biographies and autobiographies of great
men and participants in the Revolution, his name is missing.
In his commentary on this encyclopedia, Haupt notes that all
the important figures of the Revolution are represented, and
laments only the "surprising and inexplicable absence of
Podvoysky." Even he fails to make any allusion to Novsky,
whose role in the Revolution was more significant than that
of Podvoysky. So in a "surprisinE and inexplicable" way this
man whose political principles gave validity to a rigorous
ethic, this vehement internationalist, appears in the revolu
tionary chronicles as a character without a face or a voice.
In this text, however fragmentary and incomplete, I
shall try to bring to life the memory of the extraordinary
[74} A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
and enigmatic person that was Novsky. Certain omissions
particularly those concerning the most important period of
his life: the Revolution and the years immediately following
it--could be explained in much the same way the above
commentator explains other biographies: after 1917, his
life merges with public life and becomes "a part of history."
On the other hand, as Haupt points out, we should not forget
that these biographies were written in the late 1920's: hence
the significant omissions, discretion, and haste. Haste before
death, we might add.
The ancient Greeks had an admirable custom: for any
one who perished by fire, was swallowed by a volcano, buried
by lava, torn to pieces by beasts, devoured by sharks, or
whose corpse was scattered by vultures in the desert, they
built so-called cenotaphs, or empty tombs, in their home-
lands; for the body is only fire, water, or earth, whereas the
soul is the Alpha and the Omega, to which a shrine should
be erected.
Right after Christmas of 1885, the Czar's Second Cav
alry Regiment halted on the west bank of the Dnieper to
catch their breath and celebrate the feast of the Epiphany.
Prince Vyazemsky, a cavalry colonel, emerged from the icy
water with the symbol of Christ in the form of a silver cross.
Prior to that, the soldiers had shattered the thick crust of ice
for some twenty meters around with dynamite; the water
was the color of steel. The young Prince Vyazemsky had
refused to let them tie a rope around his waist. He crossed
himself, his blue eyes gazing at the clear winter sky, and
jumped into the water. His emergence from the icy whirl
pools was first celebrated with salvos, and then with the
popping of the corks of champagne bottles in the improvised
[75} A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
officers' canteen set up in an elementary school building.
The soldiers received their holiday ration of seven hundred
grams of Russian cognac each: the personal gift of Prince
Vyazemsky to the Second Cavalry. Drinking began right
after the religious service in the village church and continued
until late in the afternoon. David Abramovich was the only
soldier not present at the service. They say that during that
time he was lying in the warm manger of the stables, reading
the Talmud, which, given the profusion of associations, seems
dubious to me. One of the soldiers noticed his absence and
a s..earch began. They found him in the shed (in the stables,
according to some) with the untouched bottle of cognac
beside him. They forced him to drink the liquor given him
by the grace of the Czar, stripped him to the waist so as not
to desecrate the uniform, and set about flogging him with a
knout. Finally, when he was unconscious, they tied him to a
horse and dragged him to the Dnieper. A thin crust had
already formed where they had previously broken the ice.
Having tied him around the waist with horse whips so he
wouldn't drown, they pushed him into the icy water. When
they finally pulled him out, blue and half dead, they poured
the remainder of the cognac down his throat and then,
holding the silver cross over his forehead, sang in chorus
"The Fruit of Thy Womb." In the evening, while he was
burning with fever, they transferred him from the stables
to the house of Solomon Malamud, the village teacher.
Malamud's sixteen-year-old daughter coated the wounds on
the back of the unfortunate private with cod-liver oil. Before
leaving with his regiment, which was being dispatched that
morning to crush an uprising, David Abramovich, still
feverish, swore to her that he would come hack He kept his
promise. From this romantic encounter, whose authenticity
[76} A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
we have no reason to doubt, Boris Davidovich was born, he
who would go down in history under the name of N ovsky,
B. D. Novsky.
In the archives of the Czar's secret police, the Okhrana,
three birth dates are entered: 1891, 1893, 1896. This was
not just the result of the false documents revolutionaries
used (a few coins to the clerk or the priest, and the matter
was taken care of); it was one more proof of bureaucratic
corruption.
At the age of four he was already able to read and
write; at nine his father took him along to the Saratov
Tavern near the Jewish market, where at a corner table, by
the porcelain spittoon, his father practiced his trade as a
lawyer. The place was frequented by retired' soldiers of the
Czar with flaming red beards and deeply sunken eyes, as well
as by convened Jewish merchants in their long greasy caftans,
whose Russian names went awkwardly with their Semitic
gait (three thousand years of slavery and a long tradition of
pogroms had created a gait peculiar to the ghettos). Since
he was already more literate than his father, little Boris
Davidovich recorded their complaints. In the evening, they
say, his mother read the Psalms to him, chanting them. When
he was ten, an old estate overseer told him about the peasant
uprisings of 1846: a harsh tale in which the knout, saber,
and gallows dealt out both justice and in justice. At thineen,
under the influence of Vladimir Soloviev's Antichrist, he ran
away from home, but was brought back, esconed by police
from a distant station. There follows a sudden and inex
plicable gap. We find him at the market selling empty
bottles for two kopecks each, then offering smuggled tobacco,
matches, and lemons. It is a known fact that at that time his
father fell under the dangerous influence of the Nihilists and
[ 77 J A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
brought the family to the edge of disaster. (Some insist that
tuberculosis played a pan in it, probably seeing in the disease
the symptoms of a treacherous, organic nihilism.)
At fourteen he worked as an apprentice for a kosher
butcher. After a year and a half we find him washing dishes
and cleaning samovars in that same tavern where once he
recorded legal complaints; at sixteen, classifying artillery
shells at the arsenal in Pavlograd; at seventeen, as a dock
worker in Riga, reading Leonid Andreyev and Scheller I]
Mihaylov while out on strike. The same year we find him in
the Teodore KibeI box and cardboard factory, where he
earned five kopecks a day.
His biography does not lack information; what is puz
zling is the chronology (which his aliases and the dizzying
succession of places make only more difficult). In February
1913 we find him in Baku as a fireman's helper on a steam
engine; in September of the same year, among the leaders
of a strike in a wallpaper factory in Ivanovo-Voznesensk; in
October, among the organizers of the street demonstrations in
St. Petersburg. Nor are details lacking: the police on horses
scattering the demonstrators with sabers and black leather
whips, the Junker variation of a knout. Boris Davidovich,
then known as Bezrabotny, managed to escape through the
side entrance of a brothel on Dolgorukovska Street. He spent
several months with tramps in the public baths, which were
undergoing renovation, then joined a terrorist group pre
parll.tg for assassinations with bombs. In the early spring of
1914, we find him, under the name of the night guard of the public
.baths, with chains on his ankles, on the hard road to Vladimir
Central Prison. III with a high fever, he passed through the
successive stages of the trip in a kind of fog. At Narym,
where they took the chains off his thin and calloused ankles,
{78) A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
{79) A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
he managed to escape in an oarless dinghy he found tied to
Petersburg (a fact historically verified) only added to his
the bank. He surrendered the dinghy to the fast current of
popularity and increased the number of invitations. Zemlya
the river, but soon realized that the unbridled force of nature,
nikov arrived in the black lacquered carriage at the appointed
like that of humanity, does not submit to dreams and curses:
times, drank champagne, and talked about Viennese high
they found him five miles downstream, where a whirlpool
society with undisguised sympathy and a certain nostalgia;
had capsized him. He had spent several hours in the icy
then, promptly at ten, he would leave the company of the
water, perhaps aware he was experiencing a repetition of his
tipsy ladies and get into the carriage. The understandable
family legend: on the bank of the river, a thin crust of ice
suspicion that Zemlyanikov had a high-society common-law
still remained. In June, under the name Jacob Mauzer, he
wife (and a child, according to some) -a suspicion he him
was again sentenced to six years for organizing a secret
self encouraged by his sudden departures promptly at ten
terrorist group among the prisoners; during his three months
could never be proven. However, many saw this as a part
in Tomsky Prison, he listened to the screams and last words
of his eccentricity, especially after that famous blunder in
of those being led to their death; in the shadow of the gallows
the salon of the Gerasimovs, where, while Olga Mihailovna
he read Antonio Labriola's texts on historical materialism.
was singing an aria, Zemlyanikov looked at his silver pocket
watch and, to everyone's astonishment, left the concert with
In the spring of 1912, in elegant St. Petersburg salons,
out waiting for the end of the aria.
where talk of Raspudn was growing ever more anxious, a
Zemlyanikov's sudden and abrupt leave-takings from St.
young engineer named Zemlyanikov appeared, dressed in a
Petersburg'S salons did not surprise anyone. It was common
light-colored suit in the latest fashion, with a dark orchid
knowledge that, as chief engineer, he often traveled abroad:
pinned to his lapel, a dandy'S hat, a walking stick, and a
a responsibility he alleviated by using the occasion to renew
monocle. This dandy, with his fine bearing, broad shoulders,
his wardrobe with elegant accessories and, along with suitable
small, trim beard, and thick dark hair, boasted of his con
presents, to bring some new anecdote about fashionable life
nections, talked of Rasputin with derision, and claimed to be
outside Russia. Thus his absence from a famous soiree that
a personal acquaintance of Leonid Andreyev. From here on,
fall elicited only regret, the more so since Zemlyanikov had
the story unfolds in a classical manner: suspicious at first of
confirmed his attendance by telegram. But this time his
the young braggart, the ladies discovered his indisputable
absence lasted a little too long, and it could rightfully be
charm and began to pester him with invitations, especially
said that Zemlyanikov's presence in St. Petersburg salons
after he had proved at least one of his stories. Marya
was only a seasonal fad, one of those that undergo the sad
Gregorovna Popko, the wife of a high official of the Czar,
fate of sudden oblivion. (His place was filled by a handsome
spotted him one day in the suburbs, sitting in a black lac
young cadet who brought fresh anecdotes from the Court,
quered carriage, giving orders while bending over his plans.
from the immediate presence of Rasputin himself, but who,
The news that Zemlyanikov was the chief engineer responsi
unlike Zemlyanikov, had no other duties and so would
ble for setting up electric cables and installations in St.
entertain the company till dawn.) The astonishment was
{80 J A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
greater when that same Marya Gregorovna Popko, who
seemed to en joy roaming the city in her carriage like a queen,
spied a familiar face on Stolpinska Street among the frozen
and starved prisoners who were sweeping the pavement. She
approached this man and dropped a coin in his hand; without
doubt, it was Zemlyanikov.
So the ghost of Engineer Zemlyanikov had returned
again to the salons, and briefly threatened to undermine the
fame of Rasputin. It was not too difficult to establish certain
facts: Zemlyanikov had used his frequent trips abroad for
thoroughly disloyal purposes; on his last return from Berlin,
under the silk shirts and expensive suits in his black leather
suitcases, the border police had discovered some fifty Brown
ings of German make. But what Marya Gregorovna couldn't
have known-and for its revelation, some twenty years had
to elapse (until the discovery of the Okhrana archives stolen
by Ambassador Malakov)-elicited a much greater shock:
Zemlyanikov was the organizer of and a participant in the
famous "expropriation" of the mail car, when several mil
lion rubles came into the hands of the revolutionaries; in
addition to the confiscated Brownings, he had on three
separate occasions transported explosives and arms to Russia;
as the editor of Eastern Dawn, which was printed on cigarette
paper in a secret printing shop, he personally transported
rubber stencils in his black suitcase; the spectacular assas
sinations of the last five or six years were his doing (they
were different from all other assassinations: the bombs
assembled in Zemlyanikov's secret workshop reduced their
victims to a heap of bloody flesh); as a consequence of
his arrogant behavior (doubtless simulated), the workers
assigned to him hated him; by his own admission he
dreamed of creating a bomb the size of a walnut but with
{81 J A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
tremendous destructive force (an ideal, they say, to which
he came dangerously close); the police believed him dead
after the assassination of Governor von Launitz (three wit
nesses confirmed that the head displayed in an alcohol-filled
jar was Zemlyanikov's; the appearance of the demonic Azef
was needed to ascertain that the head in the alcohol, already
somewhat shrunken, was not identical to the "Assyrian skull"
of Zemlyanikov) ; he had escaped twice from prison and once
from a labor camp (the first time by smashing through the
wall of the prison cell; the second time by escaping during
bathing time, dressed as the prison supervisor whom he left
naked); after his last arrest, he crossed the border in a Jewish
one-horse cart, disguised as a traveling merchant, by way of
the famous Vilkomirsky smugglers' road; he lived with a
false passport under the name M. V. Zemlyanikov, but his
real name was Boris Davidovich Malamud, alias B. D.
Novsky.
After an obvious gap in our sources (with which we
don't want to burden the reader, so he can retain a pleasant
but false satisfaction in believing that this is a story like any
other, which, fortunately for the author, is usually equated
with the power of his imagination) , we find him in an insane
asylum in Malinovsk, among severely disturbed and dangerous
lunatics, from which, disguised as a high school student, he
escaped on a bicycle to Batum. Undoubtedly he faked his
madness, its certification by two eminent doctors notwith
standing; even the police were aware of this, retaining the
two doctors as sympathizers of the Revolution. His later
whereabouts are more or less known: one early September
morning in 1913, just before dawn, Novsky boarded a ship
and, hidden among tons of eggs, headed for Paris via Con
{ 82 } A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
stantinople. There, during the day we find him in the Russian
Library on the Avenue des Gobelins and .in the Musee
Guimet, where he studied the philosophy of history and
religion; and in the evening, in La Rotonde in Montparnasse
with a glass of beer, wearing "the most elegant hat to be
found in all Paris." (Bruce Lockhart's allusion to Novsky's
hat is not, however, without its political implications: it is
common knowledge that Novsky was a functionary of the
powerful union of Jewish hatmakers in France.) After the
declaration of war, he disappeared from Montparnasse. The
police found him in the vineyards near Montpellier during
the harvest season, with a basket of ripe grapes in his arms:
this time, putting handcuffs on his wrists was not difficult.
Whether Novsky escaped from France or was expelled is not
known. We do know that he soon appeared in Berlin as one
of the collaborators on the Social Democratic papers Neue
Zeitung and Leipziger Volkzeitung under the pseudonyms
B. N. Dolsky, Parabellum, Victor Tverdohlebov, Proletarsky,
and N. 1. Davidovich, and that, among other things, he wrote
a famous review of Max Schippers The -HiJtory 0/ the Pro
duction 0/ Sugar. "He was," writes the Austrian Socialist
Oscar Blum, "a strange mixture of amorality, cynicism, and
spontaneous enthusiasm for ideas, books, music, and human
beings. He looked, 1'd say, like a cross between a professor
and a bandit. But his intellectual brio was unquestionable.
That virtuoso of Bolshevik journalism knew how to conduct
conversations which were as full of explosives as his edi
torials." (The word "explosives" leads us to the bold con
clusion that Oscar Blum might have been acquainted with
the secret life of Novsky. Unless it is only a matter of
inadvertent metaphor.) In Berlin at the outbreak of war,
when the workers who rallied to the flag resembled ghosts,
{ 83 } A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
and cabarets full of thick cigar smoke resounded with female
shrieks, and all that cannon fodder tried to drown its fears
and despair in beer and schnapps, Novsky, Blum adds, was
the only one who didn't lose his head in this European
madhouse, the only one with a clear perspective.
On a bright autumn day, while lunching at the salon
of the famous Davos Sanatorium in Basel, where he was
undergoing treatment for his nerves and his slightly tuber
cular lungs, Novsky was visited by one of the members of
the International named Levin. Dr. Grunwald approached
them; he was Swiss, a disciple and friend of Jung, an author
ity in his field. According to Levin's testimony, the conversa
tion was about the weather (the sunny October), about
music (a recent concert given by a woman patient), about
death (her musical soul had expired the night before). Be
tween the meat and quince compote, served them by a waiter
wearing a uniform and white gloves, Dr. Griinwald, losing
the thread of the conversation, said in his nasal voice (only
to fill an awkward silence): "There's some kind of revolution
in St. Petersburg." (A pause.) The spoon in Levin's hand
stopped in mid-air; Novsky started, and reached for his cigar.
Dr. GrUnwald felt a certain uneasiness. Trying to infuse his
voice with absolute indifference, Novsky attempted to calm
his trembling hands. "Excuse me. Where did you hear that?"
.As if apologizing, Dr. Griinwald said that he had seen the
news that morning posted in the windows of the telegraph
bureau in town. Without waiting for coffee, deathly pale,
Novsky and Levin quickly left the salon and went into town
by taxi. "I heard as if dazed," writes Levin, "the murmur
coming from the salon, accompanied by the din of silver
utensils like the tinkling of bells, and saw as through a fog
{ 84 J A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
the world we had left behind, and which was irretrievably
sinking into the past, as into murky water."
Some documents lead us to conclude that Novsky,
swept away by a wave of nationalism and bitterness, received
the news of the truce, in spite of everything, as a blow.
Levin speaks of a nervous crisis, and Meisnerova passes over
this period with the haste of an accomplice. It seems, however,
that without great resistance Novsky dropped his Mauser
and, as a sign of remorse, burned the plans of his assault
bombs and his 70-meter flame throwers, and joined the
ranks of the Internationalists. Soon we find him, tireless and
ubiquitous, among the supporters of the Brest-Litovsk peace,
distributing antiwar propaganda leaflets, and, as a fiery
agitator among the soldiers, standing on boxes of artillery
shells, erect as a statue. In this quick and, so to speak, painless
transformation of Novsky, a certain woman appears to have
played a major role. In the chronicles of the Revolution, her
name is recorded: Zinaida Mihailovna Maysner. A certain
Leo Mikulin, who had the misfortune of falling in love with
her, has portrayed her with words that could easily have been
engraved on marble: "Nature gave her everything: intelli
gence, talent, beauty."
In February 1918, we see him in the wheat fields of
Tula, Tambov, and Orel, on the banks of the Volga, in
Kharkov, where under his supervision convoys of confiscated
wheat were sent up to Moscow. In the black leather uniform
of a commissar, with shiny boots, and a leather and sheep
skin cap without insignia, he dispatched the convoys, his hand
on his Mauser, until the last boat disappeared into the hazy
distance. In May of the following year, he put on a camou
{85 J A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
flaged uniform and became a sharpshooter cutting off
Denikin's rear guard. The terrifying explosions in the south
west sector of the front, taking place suddenly and myste
riously, leaving a slaughterhouse behind them, bore Novsky's
stamp just as handwriting can reveal character to an expert.
In late September, on the torpedo boat Spartacus, which flew
the red flag, Novsky set off for Reval on patrol. Suddenly
the boat ran into a strong British squadron of seven light
vessels armed with 25-millimeter guns. The torpedo boat
swerved and, with a reckless maneuver under the cloak of
the descending night, succeeded in reaching Kronstadt. If we
can believe the testimony of Captain Olimsky, the crew of
the torpedo boat should have been much more grateful for
their lucky rescue to the shrewdness of a woman, Zinaida
Mihailovna Maysner, than to Novsky's presence: she was the
one who negotiated by signal flag with the British flagship.
A letter from those years, written in Novsky's hand,
remains the only authentic document that combines, deeply
and mysteriously, revolutionary passion with sensual love:
u As soon as I entered the university I found myself in
prison. I was arrested exactly thirteen times. Of the twelve
years that followed my first arrest, I spent more than half at
hard labor. In addition, three times I walked the painful road
of exile, a road that took three years of my life. During the
brief periods of my 'freedom' I watched, as in a movie
theater, the passing of sad Russian villages, towns, people,
and events, but I was always in flight-on a horse, on a boat,
in a cart. I never slept in the same bed for more than a month.
I've come to know the horror of Russian reality in the long
tedious winter evenings when the pale lights of Vasilevsky
Island barely blink, and a Russian village emerges in the
moonlight in a false and deceptive beauty. My only passion
{86} A TOMB POR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
was this arduous, rapturous, and mysterious profession of
revolutionary.... Forgive me, Zina, and carry me in your
heart; it will be as painful as a kidney stone."
The wedding ceremony was performed on December 27,
1919, on the torpedo boat Spartacus, which was anchored in
Kronstadt harbor. The documents are few and contradictory.
According to some, Zinaida Mihailovna was deathly pale,
with "the pallor that unites death and beauty" (Mikulin),
and looked more like an anarchist before a firing squad than
the muse of the Revolution who has just escaped death by
a hairbreadth. Mikulin mentions a white wedding wreath on
Zinaida's hair, the sole symbol of old times and custom,
while in his memoirs Olimsky talks about the white gauze
which "like a wedding wreath" was wrapped around Mays
ner's wounded head. The same Olimsky, who proved more
objective in his memory than the lyrical Mikulin (who passed
Novsky by in silence, so to speak), gives an altogether sche
matic picture of the political commissar in that intimate mo
ment: "Handsome, with a stern look, dressed monastically
even for that solemn occasion, he appeared more like a young
German student who had emerged the victor in a duel than a
political commissar who had just come back from a fiery skir
mish." Everyone more or less agrees in other details. The boat
was quickly decorated with signal flags and lit up with red,
green, and blue bulbs. Simultaneously celebrating the wedding
and their victory over death, the crew appeared on deck freshly
shaved and pink-cheeked, fully armed, as if for an inspection.
But the cables informing the general staff about the course
of the operation and the lucky rescue had drawn the attention
of the officers of the Red fleet, who now arrived in blue
military overcoats over their white summer uniforms. The
{ 87 } A TOMB POR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
torpedo boat greeted them with whistles and the cheers of
the crew. The breathless radioman brought to the com
mander's bridge, where the young married couple had taken
shelter, uncoded cables with congratulations from all the
Soviet ports from Astrakhan to Enzeli: "long live the newly
weds!" "long live the Red fleet!" "Hurrah for the brave
crew of the Spartacusl" The Revolutionary Council of Kron
stadt sent armored cars with nine cases of French champagne
seized from the anarchists the day before. Kronstadt's brass
band climbed up the gangplank and onto the deck playing
marches. Because of the temperature, 22 0 below zero (Fahr
enheit), the instruments had a strange, cracked sound, as if
made of ice. Patrol boats swarmed around, greeting the crew
with signals. Three times stern trios of Chekists came on deck,
their guns drawn, demanding that the celebration be stopped
for security reasons; three times they returned their guns to
their holsters at the mention of Novsky's name, and joined
the officers' chorus in its shouts of "Bitter! Bitter! ... Sweet!
Sweetl" The empty champagne bottles flew over the sides like
2S-millimeter artillery shells. At dawn, when the sun broke
through the fog of the winter morning like the flame of a
._~stant
fire, one drunken Chekist saluted the birth of the new
day with a salvo from the antiaircraft gun. The crew was
strewn all over the deck as if dead, lying on heaps of broken
glass, empty bottles, confetti, and small frozen puddles of
French champagne rosy as blood. (The reader recognizes,
surely, the awkward lyricism of leo Mikulin, a student of
the Imagists.)
This marriage was dissolved after eighteen months, and
Zinaida Mihailovna, during an illegal excursion to Europe,
became the companion of the Soviet diplomat A. D. Kara
mazov. As far as her brief marriage to Novsky is concerned,
"
{88} A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
some documents tell of tormented scenes of jealousy and
passionate reconciliations. The claim that Novsky used to
whip Zinaida Mihailovna in his jealous fits, however, may
well be the fruit of another jealous imagination-that of
Mikulin. In her autobiographical book Wave After Wave,
Zinaida Mihailovna passes over her personal memories as if
writing them on water: the whip appears here only in its
historical and metaphorical context as the "knout" that
mercilessly whips the face of the Russian people.
(Zinaida Mihailovna Maysner died of malaria in August
1926. In Persia. She was not quite thirty years old.)
As we have mentioned before, it is impossible to estab
lish the exact chronology of Novsky's life during the civil war
years and those immediately following. It is known that in
1920 he fought against the rebellious and despotic emirs in
Turkestan, and subjugated them with their own weapons of
cunning and cruelty; that during the hot summer of 1921,
noted in the annals for the invasion of malarial mosquitoes
and horseflies that swarmed down to suck the people's blood,
he was in charge of the liquidation of banditry in the Tambov
Region, on which occasion he received a saber or knife
wound that gave his face the cruel stamp of heroism. At the
Congress of Eastern Peoples we find him at the presidential
table, aloof, with the perennial cigarette between his yellowed
teeth. His speech was greeted with applause, but one reporter
observed the absence of zeal, and the dull gaze of this man
whom they had once called "the Bolshevik Hamlet." We
know also that for a time he served as the political com
missar of the Caucasus-Caspian Revolutionary Naval Co~
mittee, and that he was an artillery corps officer in the Red
Army, then a diplomat in Afghanistan and Estonia. At the
{89J A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
end of 1924 he appeared in London as a member of the
delegation negotiating with the perpetually distrustful Brit
ish. On that occasion he personally initiated contact with
representatives of the trade unions, who invited him to the
next congress in Hull.
As far as we know, he held his last position in Kazakh
stan, in the Central Office for Communications and Liaisons.
He was bored; and in his office he again began to draw plans
and make calculations: a bomb the size of a walnut, with
tremendous destructive power, obsessed him until the end of
his life.
B. D. Novsky, the representative of the People's Com
missariat for Communications and Liaisons, was arrested in
Kazakhstan on December 23, 1930, at two o'clock in the
morning. His arrest was much less dramatic than reported in
the West. According to the reliable testimony of his sister,
there was no armed resistance and fighting on the stairs.
Novsky was asked urgently over the telephone to come to
the Central Office. The voice was probably that of the engi
neer on duty: Butenko. During the search, which lasted until
eight o'clock in the morning, all his documents, photographs,
manuscripts, sketches, and plans, as well as his books, were
taken. This was the first ~' step toward the liquidation of
Novsky. On the basis of very rece~t information, given by
A. 1. Rubina, Novsky's sister, this is what happened later:
Novsky was confronted with a certain Reinhold, T. S.
Reinhold, who confessed that he was a British spy, and that
by order he had been sabotaging the economy. Novsky main
tained that he had never before seen this unfortunate man
with a cracked voice and a dull gaze. After fifteen days,
which were granted to Novsky to think things over, he was
 [90] A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
again brought before the interrogator, and offered sand
wiches and a cigarette. Novsky refused the offer and asked
for a pencil and paper, to get in touch with some people in
high places. At dawn the next day he was taken out of his
cell and sent to Suzdal. When the car arrived at the railroad
station on that icy morning, the platform was deserted. A
. single cattle car stood on a siding, and it was to this car that
they took Novsky. Fedukin, the tall, pock-marked, and un
bending interrogator, spent some five hours alone with
Novsky in this cattle car (the doors were locked from the
outside), trying to persuade him of the moral obligation of
making a false confession. These negotiations failed entirely. .
Then followed long nights without days spent in solitary
confinement in Suzdal Prison, in a damp stone-walled cell
known as the "doghouse," which had the major architectural
advantage of making a man feel as if he were buried alive,
so that he experienced his mortal being, in comparison with
the eternity of stone and time, as a speck of dust in the ocean
of timelessness. Novsky was already a man of failing health;
the long years of hard labor and revolutionary zeal, which
feeds on blood and glands, had weakened his lungs, kidneys,
and joints. His body was now covered with boils, which
would burst under the blows of rubber truncheons, oozing
out his precious blood along with useless pus. NeverthelesS,
it seems that in contact with the stone of his living tomb,
Novsky drew some metaphysical conclusions undoubtedly
not much different from those suggesting the thought that
man is only a speck of dust in the ocean of timelessness; but
this also revealed to him another conclusion, which the
architectS of the "doghouse" could not have foreseen: nothing
for nothing. The man who found in his heart this heretical
and dangerous thought, which speaks of the futility of one's
own being-in-time, finds himself, however, faced with another
[91] A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
(final) dilemma: whether to accept the transitoriness of
this being-in-time for the sake of that precious and expen
sively acquired knowledge (which excludes any morality and
therefore is made in absolute freedom), or, for the sake of
that same knowledge, to yield oneself to the embrace of
nothingness.
For Fedukin it was a question of honor, the greatest
challenge: to break down Novsky. In his long career as an
interrogator, he had always succeeded: in breaking their
backs, he had also broken the wills of even the most tenacious
prisoners (which was why they always gave him the toughest
material). Novsky, however, stood before him like a scien
tific puzzle, an unknown organism that behaved quite un
predictably and atypically in relation to Fedukin's entire
experience. (There is no doubt that in Fedukin's laudable
theorizing there was no bookishness, given his less than
modest education, so that any connection with teleological
reasoning would have escaped him. He must have felt like
the originator of a doctrine, which he formulated very simply,
to make it comprehensible to any man: "Even a stone would
talk if you broke its teeth.") ""
The journal Wo,ke, published several fragments from Fedukin's memoirs,
called The Second Front (August and November 1964). Thus far, this auto
biographical "piece" covers only the earliest period of Fedukin's "background
activity," but judging by this material, in which the vividness of his actual
practice is replaced by overly schematic reflections, I am afraid that even the
complete edition of his memoirs would not reveal the secret of his genius: it
seems to me that, except in actual practice, Fedukin was a theoretical zero. He
extracted confessions according to the most profound principles of inner psy_
chology without even being aware that psychology existed; he dealt with human
souls and their secrets without knowing that he did. But even now, what really
attracts us in Fedukin's remembrances are his descriptions of nature: the
austere beauty of the Siberian landscape, the sunrise over the frozen tundra,
diluvial rains and treacherous waters cutting through the taiga, the silence of
distant lakes, their steel coior-all of which testifies to his undeniable literary
talent,
[ 92 ) A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
On the night of January 28-29, they led from his cell
a man who still bore the name Novsky, though he was now
only the empty shell of a being, a heap of decayed and ever
tortured flesh. In Novsky's dull gaze one could read, as the
only sign of soul and life, the decision to endure, to write the
last page of his biography according to his own will and
fully conscious, as one writes a last testament. He formulated
his thought like this: "I've reached my mature years-why
spoil my biography?" He therefore seemed to have realized
that even this last trial was not only the final page of the
autobiography which he had been consciously writing with
his blood and brain for some forty years, but also that this
was indeed the sum of his living, the conclusion on which
everything hinged, and all the rest was (and had been) only
a minor treatise, the arithmetical calculation whose value
was insignificant in relation to the final formula that gave .
meaning to these subordinate operations.
Novsky was led out of the cell by two guards, who
supported him on each side, down some half-dark stairs that
wound vertiginously into the depths of the triple cellar of
the prison. They brought him to a room illuminated by a
bare light bulb that hung from the ceiling. The guards re
leased him, and Novsky staggered. He heard the iron door
close behind him, but at first he noticed only the light, which
cut painfully into his consciousness. The door opened again,
and the same two guards, preceded by Fedukin, brought in a
young man and left him about one meter from Novsky. It
flashed through Novsky's mind that this was probably an
other false confrontation, one of many, so he stubbornly
clenched his toothless jaws and with a painful effort opened
his swollen eyelids to get a look at the young man. He ex
pected to see again a corpse with dull eyes (like Reinhold),
but with a shiver very much like foreboding he saw before
[ 93 ) A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
him young, living eyes full of fear that was human, altogether
human. The young man was naked to the waist; with aston
ishment and the dread of the unknown, Novsky realized that
his muscular body was entirely devoid of blue marks, without
a single bruise, with healthy dark skin untouched yet by
putrefaction. But what astonished and frightened him the
most was that gaze, whose meaning he could not penetrate,
that unknown game into which he was being drawn, at the
point when he thought that everything was already over in
the best possible sense. Could he have fathomed what the
ingenious and infernal intuition of Fedukin was preparing
for him? Fedukin was standing behind him, invisible yet
present, holding his breath, letting Novsky discover it for
himself and be horrified by it and then, when the denial born
of terror whispered to him that that was impossible, ready
to hit him suddenly with the truth, the truth more awful
than the merciful bullet he could use to blow his brains out.
At the same moment that the denial born of terror
whispe~ed to Novsky that that was impossible, he heard
Fedukin's voice: "If Novsky doesn't confess, we'll kill you!"
The young man's face grew distorted with fear, and he fell on
his knees in front of Novsky. Novsky shut his eyes, but be
cause of the handcuffs couldn't cover his ears so as not to
hear the young man's pleadings, which suddenly, as if by some
miracle, began to shake the hard rock of his resolution, to
break down his will. The young man was imploring him with
a trembling, broken voice to confess for the sake of his life.
Novsky clearly heard the guards cock their guns. Behind his
tightly shut lids there arose in him, simultaneously with the
reawakening of pain and the premonition of failure, hatred;
he had enough time to realize that Fedukin had seen through
him and had decided to devastate him where he felt the
strongest: in his egocentricity. For if Novsky had discovered
 '.
[ 94 ] A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
the saving but dangerous idea of the futility of one's own
being-in-time and suffering, this was still a moral choice;
Fedukin's intuitive genius had sensed that this choice does
not exclude morality-quite the contrary. The guns must
have had silencers, since Novsky hardly heard the shots.
When he opened his eyes, the young man was lying in front
of him in a pool of blood, his brains spilled out.
Fedukin didn't waste words. He knew that Novsky had
understood; he signaled to the guards to take Novsky away,
and they lifted him up by the arms. Fedukin gave him twenty
four hours to think it over in his well-guarded cell, where
again he would be able, "under the death shroud of stone,"
to ascertain his moral position, which was whispering de
moniacally into his ear that his biography was final and well
rounded, without flaws, as perfect as a sculpture. The next
night, that of January 29-30, the scene was repeated: the
guards led Novsky down the vertiginous spiral stairs into
the deep cellars of the prison. Novsky realized with horror
that this repetition was not accidental, but part of an infernal
plan: each day of his life would be paid for with the life of
another man; the perfection of his biography would be
destroyed, his life work (his life) deformed by these final
pages.
Fedukin's direction was perfect: the mise en scene of the
previous night was the same, with the same Fedukin, the
same cellar, the same light bulb, the same Novsky-the
elements entirely sufficient to give the repeated action the
appearance of something identical and inevitable, as the
The expression was used by Leo Mikulin to immortalize his own biography,
sometime in 1936. This metaphor is less arbitrary than it seems at first glance;
Mikulin died of a heart attack in solitary confinement in Suzdal Prison. (Some
sources maintain that he was strangled.)
[ 95 ] A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
alteration of day and night is inevitable. Only this hall-naked
young man trembling in front of him was slighrly different
( only as one day spent in the same cell differs from another) .
Fedukin probably sensed, by the silence that fell for a mo
ment, how much harder today's trial was for Novsky than
yesterday'S; today, while Novsky stood eye-to-eye with the
unknown young man, there remained not even a shred of
hope for his morality, no taking of shelter in some thought
that could come to his rescue, a thought that could whisper
to him, despite cenain clear outside indications, that this was
impossible: last night's quick and efficient demonstration
had shown him the futility of this kind of thought, that such
a thought was deadly. (And tomorrow, and the day after
tomorrow, and in three or ten days more, this thought would
become even more absurd, even more impossible.)
Novsky thought that he knew this young man from some
where. He had fair skin sprinkled with freckles, an unhealthy
complexion, thick dark hair, and slightly crossed eyes; most
likely he wore glasses, and it seemed to Novsky that he could
even discern their marks still fresh on the bridge of his nose.
The thought that this young man actually looked like him
sell some twenty years ago struck him as absurd, and he tried
to discard it; nevenheless, for a split second he couldn't help
thinking that this resemblance (if real and purposeful)
carried a cenain risk for Fedukin's interrogation, and could
be regarded in some way as an error and a crack in Fedukin's
direction. But Fedukin must have sensed, too, that if this
resemblance was purposeful and the result of his careful
selection, then this notion of resemblance, of identity, would
inevitably lead Novsky to realize the major difference: this
resemblance would show him that he was killing men
similar to himsell, men whose role carried the seed of a
future biography, consistent, well rounded, much like his
[96} A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
own, but destroyed at the very onset, nipped in the bud, so
to speak, by his own doing. By his stubborn refusal to co
operate with the inquiry, he would 'find himself (indeed, he
already did) at the beginning of a long series of murders
committed in his name.
Novsky felt the presence of Fedukin behind him, hold
ing his breath and waiting in ambush for his thoughts, his
decision, just as he felt the presence of the guards, who stood
to one side with cocked guns, ready to commit murder by
his hand. Fedukin's voice was calm, unthreatening, as if
delivering the result of an entirely logical operation: "You'll
die, Isaievich, if Novsky doesn't confess." Before Novsky
had a chance to say anything at all, before he had a chance
to think of the shameful conditions of his surrender, the
young man sized him up with his nearsighted eyes, moved
close to his face, and whispered to him in a voice that made
Novsky shudder: "Boris Davidovich, don't let the sons of
bitches get you!"
In that same instant two shots resounded almost simul
taneously, though barely audible, as when a cork pops out
of a champagne bottle. He could not help opening his
tightly shut lids to verify his crime: again the guards had shot
point-blank into the back of the neck, their barrels aimed up
toward the skull; the young man's face was unrecognizable.
Fedukin left the cellar without a word and the guards
took Novsky away and threw him on the stone floor. Novsky
spent nightmarish hours in his cell, surrounded by rats.
The next evening, after the third shift of guards came
on, he asked to see the interrogator.
That same night they transferred him from the stone
cell to the prison hospital, where he spent some ten days, as
[97} A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
if in a coma, under the watchful eyes of guards and hospital
personnel, who were given the assignment of rebuilding out
of these remnants a man worthy of that name. Fedukin knew
from experience that men far less tough than Novsky became
infused with an unsuspected strength when the moment be
yond all limits was reached, and when the only issue was to
die honorably: at the moment of dying they tried to derive
from death the greatest possible gain by an obstinate resolu
tion, which, perhaps because of physical exhaustion, was most
often reduced to heroic silence. Practice had also taught him
that the restored functioning of the organism, normal blood
circulation and the absence of pain, gave convalescents and
former death candidates a certain organic conformity, which
caused as a consequence, paradoxical as it seems, the weak
. ening of the will and the ever-decreasing need for heroic
bravado.
In the meantime, the accusation that Novsky had be
longed to a spy network for the British was dropped, espe-
cially after the unsuccessful confrontation with Reinhold. .
(British trade unions contributed greatly to this, by making
a loud noise in the European press about Novsky's arrest
and by denouncing as entirely unfounded and absurd ac
cusations that appeared in the official press: the rendezvous
in Berlin with a certain Richards, who had allegedly bribed
Novsky, like Judas, with thirty pieces of silver, was refuted by
the perfect alibi of the said Richards: on that day he was
attending the trade union conference in Hull.) This awk
ward intervention by the trade unions placed before the
investigators the none-too-easy task of proving the accuracy
of their claims, in order to save their reputation on a much
wider international plane.
The negotiations lasted from February 8 to 21. Novsky
{98 J A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
prolonged' the inquiry, trying to incorporate into the con
fession-probably the only document of his that would re
main after his death--a certain wording that would not only
cushion his final downfall but also whisper to a future in
vestigator, through the skillfully woven contradictions and
exaggerations, that the whole structure of this confession
rested on a lie squeezed out of him by torture. This was why
he fought with unsuspected strength for every word, every
phrase. For his part, Fedukin, no less resolute and cautious,
made maximal demands. Through long nights the two men
struggled over the difficult text of the confession, panting
and exhausted, their heads bent over the pages enveloped in
the thick cigarette smoke, each trying to incorporate into
it some of his own passion, his own beliefs, his own outlook
from a higher perspective. Fedukin knew just as well as
Novsky (and let him know it) that all this-the entire text
of the confession, formulated on ten closely typed pages
was pure fiction, which he alone, Fedukin, had concocted
during the long hours of the night, typing with two fingers,
awkwardly and slowly (he liked to do everything himself),
trying to draw logical conclusions from certain assumptions.
He was therefore not interested in the so-called facts or
characters, but in those assumptions and their logical use; in
the final analysis his reasons were the same as Novsky's, when
Novsky, starting from another premise, ideal and idealized,
rejected any assumption beforehand. Lastly, I believe that
both acted from reasons that transcended narrow egocentric
goals: Novsky fought to preserve in his death and downfall
the dignity of not only his own image but also that of all
revolutionaries, while Fedukin, in his search for fiction and
premises, strove to preserve the sternness and consistency of
revolutionary justice and of those who dispense this justice;
{99 J A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
for it was better that the so-called truth of a single man, one
tiny organism, be destroyed than that higher interests and
principles be questioned. If, in the later stages of interroga- .
tion, Fedukin lunged at his obstinate victims, this was not
the whim of a neurotic or a cocaine addict, as some believe,
but a struggle for his convictions which, like his victims', he
considered to be altruistic, inviolable, and sacred. What
provoked Fedukin's fury and dedicated hatred was precisely
this sentimental egocentricity of the accused, their patholog
ical need to prove their own innocence, their own little truths,
this neurotic going around in circles of so-called facts en
compassed by the meridians of their skulls. It enraged him
that this blind truth of theirs could not be incorporated into a
system of higher value, a higher justice which demanded
sacrifice, and which did not and must not care about human
weakness. This was why for Fedukin anyone became a blood
enemy who could not comprehend this simple and almost
obvious fact: to sign a confession for the sake of duty was
not only a logical but also a moral act, and therefore worthy
of respect. Novsky's case was all the more defeating for him
since he respected Novsky as a revolutionary and, for a
period of time some ten years ago, had regarded him as a
model. That day in the cattle car on the siding of the Suzdal
railroad station, he had, despite everything, approached him
with due respect for his person and in full confidence. Since
then, however, he had experienced a disillusionment that
had entirely destroyed in his eyes the myth of a revolutionary:
Novsky could not understand that his own egocentricity
(surely a product of flattery and praise) was stronger in him
than his sense of duty.
One early morning in late February, Novsky returned
to his cell, exhausted but satisfied, ready to memorize the
[1001 A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
revised manuscript of his confession. The manuscript was
edited, with corrections scribbled over it in ink as red as
blood; his confession seemed to him so weighty that he could
not escape the death sentence. He smiled, or it seemed to him
that he was smiling. Fedukin had accomplished his secret
intention of preparing the final chapter of his honorable
biography. Under the cold ashes of these absurd accusations,
future investigators would discover the pathos of a life and
the consistent ending (despite everything) of a perfect
biography.
So the indictment was finally revised on February 27,
and the trial for the saboteurs scheduled for the middle of
March. At the beginning of May, after a long postponement,
there was a sudden and unexpected change in the plans of .
the investigation. Novsky was brought into Fedukin's office
for the last rehearsal of his memorized confession. Fedukin
informed him that the indictment had been altered, and
handed him the typewritten text of the new one. Standing
between the two guards, Novsky read the text and suddenly
began howling, or so it seemed to him. They dragged him
again to the "doghouse" and left him there among the well
fed rats. Novsky tried to smash his head against the stone
wall of the cell; they put him in a straitjacket and took
him to a hospital room. Awaking from the delirium induced
by morphine injections, Novsky asked to see the interrogator.
In the meantime, Fedukin, conducting two interroga
tions simultaneously, succeeded in getting a confession out of
a certain Paresyan, who, influenced only by threats (and most
likely a drink or two), signed a statement in which he
claimed that he personally had delivered the first sum of
money to Novsky as early as May 1925, when they were
co-workers in the cable factory in Novosibirsk. That money,
[1011 A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
Paresyan claimed, was a part of the regular trimonthly sum
they received from Berlin as a bribe for the satisfactory
arrangements that Novsky, through Paresyan and a man
named Titelheim, was setting up for certain foreign firms,
primarily German and British. Titelheim, an engineer with
a small goatee and glasses, a man of the old school with
old-fashioned principles, couldn't understand why he had
to drag into his confession other people whom he didn't
even know, but Fedukin found a way to persuade him: after
a long resistance old Titelheim, determined to die honorably,
heard terrible screams from the adjoining room, and recog
nized the voice of his only daughter. Promised that her life
would be spared, he agreed to all of Fedukin's conditions,
and signed the statement without even reading it. (Years
went by before the truth about the Tite1heims came to light:
in some transit labor camp the old man found out almost by
chance, from a woman prisoner nam~ Ginsburg, that his
daughter had been murdered in a prison cell on the very day
of his interrogation.)
In the middle of May the confrontation between those
two and Novsky took place. It seemed to Novsky that
Paresyan reeked of vodka; with a thick tongue he threw at
N ovsky in bad Russian the fantastic details of their long
standing collaboration. From Paresyan's sincere fury, Novsky
knew that Fedukin, in his art of squeezing out confessions,
had in Paresyan's case attained that ideal level of cooperation
which was the goal of every decent interrogation: Paresyan,
thanks to Fedukin's creative genius, had accepted the prem
ises as the living reality, more real than a jumble of facts,
and had colored those premises with his own remorse and
hatred. Titelheim, oblivious, with a gaze turned toward a
distant dead world, couldn't remember the details he had
{ 102 J A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
put in the signed statement, and Fedukin had to remind him
sternly of the rules of good conduct. Titelheim slowly re
membered the amount, cited figures, places, and dates.
Novsky realized that his last chance for rescue was slipping
away, that Fedukin had prepared the most dishonorable of
deaths for him: he would die as a thief who, like Judas, had
sold his soul for thirty pieces of silver. (Most likely it will
remain forever a secret whether this was only a part of
Fedukin's prepared plan to get Novsky to cooperate sin
cerely, or yet another revision of the indictment brought
about by the one who didn't want to die dishonorably.)
That night, after the confrontation, Novsky again tried
to commit suicide and thereby save a part of the legend. The
watchful eye and doglike hearing of the guards, however,
detected some suspicious sound, probably the sigh of relief
that reached them from the dying man's cell: with his veins
slashed, Novsky was taken to the hospital cell, where he
stubbornly kept tearing off the bandages, and they had to
feed him intravenously. (This was the next step toward the
final liquidation of Novsky.)
In the face of such obstinacy, Fedukin gave in and
named Novsky (on the basis of the previous indictment) as
the leader of the conspiracy. Confronted separately with
each member of the alleged sabotage cell (which was being
assembled under Fedukin's supervision), N ovsky, staring
into space with dead, astigmatic eyes, recognized in some of
the frightened strangers those with whom "he had been
hatching brave plots to blow up installations that were of
vital importance to the military industry." Along with this
. he added certain details from the memorized script. Fedukin,
who had finally discovered in Novsky a useful and skillful
collaborator, left it to Novsky's own intelligence to smooth
out some contradictions and inconsistencies in the complex
{103} A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
script of the indictment. (In this, Novsky used his lifelong
experience, acquired in the Czar's prisons and in fights against
cautious procurators.)
The quiet course of this collaboration was marred only
once, in late May, when Novsky was confronted with a cer.
tain Rabinovich. 1. 1. Rabinovich had been Novsky's spiritual
mentor since the early Pavlograd days; he was an expert
engineer, who had discovered talent in Novsky and initiated
him into the secrets of making explosives. In the course of
Novsky's irregular but no less brilliant studies, the role of
Isaac Rabinovich had been manifold: not only had he sup
plied young Novsky with advice and professional literature,
but also on many occasions he had, by his reputation and
intervention, come to his rescue, putting up high bail for
him, etc. (The fearful results of certain explosions that
shook St. Petersburg around 1910 had provoked justified
suspicions in old Rabinovich, and for a time had alienated
him from his overly talented student.) For the many favors
he had obtained from him, N ovsky had repaid Rabinovich
during the civil war, when he pulled him out of the clutches
of zealous Chekists, who saw in Rabinovich a would-be
assassin and harbored a profound distrust of him, inspired
by his knowledge of explosives. It seems, though, that the
bond between Novsky and Rabinovich was primarily one of
affection: the old story of the idealized father, and that
father's discovery of his secret dreams in a young man in
whom he recognized his own traits. Consequently, Novsky
refused to sign the part of the indictment that referred to
Rabinovich. (The presence of Rabinovich in the courtroom,
however, was of primary importance for the interrogation,
because of his profile: heredity, race, environment.) There
upon Fedukin played his last card: he pulled out of his desk
drawer Paresyan's and Titelheim's confessions, which in the
{104 J A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
meantime had been enriched by new details, and by the
confessions of three additional participants in what was
called "the Great Theft of Public Funds." All three named
Novsky as the ringleader and gave details about his charac
ter, reducing his revolutionary elan to an unscrupulous lust
for money, and his legendary asceticism to a comical mask
and to shrewdness. Some documents touched on the early
Paris and St. Petersburg days, with clear allusions to the
fashionable life of the young revolutionary, who undoubtedly
bought his famous hats and red vests with money received
from the fat funds of the Okhrana.
Novsky realized that he had no choice. In exchange for
a return favor from Fedukin, he signed the confession to the
effect that Professor Rabinovich had collaborated with him
in the making of explosives. The details concerning the kind
of shrapnel and detonator; the destructive power of the gun
powder, dynamite, kerosene, and TNT; the method of con
struction, and place where the infernal machines were made,
as well as their destructive power under particular conditions
-all this Novsky himself dictated into the statement. In
exchange, in front of Novsky, Fedukin burned in a big iron
stove the compromising document (now useless) about the
group of thieves and speculators.
In the middle of April, the trial of the saboteurs, now
involving twenty members, was conducted behind closed
doors. According to the testimony of a certain Snaserov,
Novsky, despite his occasional obliviousness, spoke with a
passion that Snaserov attributed to high fever. "It was his
best political speech yet," he adds, not without malice (clearly
alluding to those false rumors that Novsky was a poor
speaker: the first premature sign of the destruction of the
myth known as Novsky.) Another survivor of this trial,
Kaurin, gives him credit, stating that, despite the horrendous
{105 J A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
torture to which he had been subjected during the many
months of his interrogation, he did not lose any of his
sharpness, "which overwhelmed us alL" He also says: "Once
he was an agile man with quick, lively eyes, and now he
drags his feet, he is gaunt, his eyes deep in their sockets, and
at times he seems totally absent; he looks like a ghost, but
not his own. At least not until he speaks; then again he is
more a devil than a man." It should be pointed out, however,
that Novsky's role in this trial was greatly determined by
the trade unions and the emigre press, which insisted that
in the framework of this trial lurked hidden provocateurs
who had nothing to do with revolutionaries. Therefore
Novsky aimed the deadly power of his eloquence in that
direction, trying in a fit of honest fury to demolish these
arguments of the Mensheviks and the trade unions, which
could reduce his biography and his end to that which he
feared the most, and against which, all these months, he had
fought a bloody battle to the death.
The state prosecutor, V. N. Krichenko, an expert on
high treason, asked the highest punishment for the first five
men indicted, but, to general astonishment, as Kaurin says,
in his closing speech Krichenko did not "drag Novsky
through the mud." (I tend to believe that the role of Novsky
in this trial was bought at that price.) In a way he even gave
Novsky credit, since Novsky was able to retain his integrity
until the very end, in spite of everything (as proved by his
sincere cooperation with the interrogation). Krichenko even
called him an "old revolutionary," stressing the fact that
Novsky had always ,been a fanatic in his ideas and convic
tions, which in one fatal moment he had placed in the service
of the counterrevolution and the international bourgeois
conspiracy. Striving to find a scientific explanation for this
mora 1deviation, Krichenko discovered it in the petit-bourgeois
{l06] A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
background of the accused, and in the destructive influence
of his frequent visits to the West, during which he was more
interested in literary trivia than in politics. In the Kolyma
hospital, where he was lying half blind and sick with scurvy,
old Rabinovich told Dr. Taube about the meeting that took
place a&er the trial between himself and Novsky in the
anteroom of the court. "Boris Davidovich," he had said to
Novsky, ''I'm afraid that you must be out of your mind.
You'll bury us all with your plea." Novsky answered him
with a strange expression on his face, which seemed to be
the shadow of a smile. "Isaac Ilich, you should know the
Jewish funeral custom: at the moment when they are ready
to take the corpse from the synagogue to the cemetery, one .
servant of Yahweh bends over the deceased, calls him by
name, and says in a loud voice: 'Know that you are dead!'"
He paused a moment, then added: "An excellent custom!"
.As a sign of gratitude-and probably convinced that
he had got out of death the most a living man could
N ovsky insisted in his final speech that his crimes fully
deserved the death sentence as the only just punishment, that
he did not find the decision of the prosecutor too severe, and
would not appeal the case to save his life. Since he managed
to avoid the noose of the shameful gallows, he considered
death before a firing squad a happy and fitting ending; even
outside this moral context, he must have felt that some
higher justice demanded that he die by steel and lead.
But they did not kill him (it is more difficult, it seems,
to choose death than life): the sentence was reduced, and
after one year in the shadow of death, he embarked again on
the hard road of exile. At the beginning of 1934, under the
name Dolsky-the same one he had adopted during his last
imprisonment under the Czar-we find him in the recently
{107] A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
colonized Turgay. (One should not try to find in his change
of names a message for the future, a sign of defiance and
provocation, for Novsky was guided primarily by practical
considerations: some of his documents still bore that name.)
The same year he received permission from the government
to settle in the even more remote Aktyubinsk, where, sur
rounded by suspicious colonists, he worked on a farm growing
sugar beets. In December, his sister was granted permission
to visit him, and found him ill: Novsky complained of pains
in his kidneys. By this time he had permanent dentures made
of stainless steel. (Whether his teeth were broken during
the interrogation, as Dr. Taube maintained, is difficult to
say.) Novsky refused her suggestion that she try to obtain
permission for his transfer to Moscow: he did not want to
look the world in the eye. "He expected death during the
early morning hours," she writes, "which coincided with
those of his arrest: his body rigid, glassy-eyed, he'd stare in
the direction of the door, which even so he never locked.
When three o'clock had passed, he'd pick up his guitar and
softly sing entirely unintelligible songs. He had auditory
hallucinations and heard voices and footsteps in the hallway."
(In those years the following anecdote made the rounds in
Moscow: "What's our Novsky doing?" "He's drinking tea
with currant jam and playing the 'International' on the
guitar." "But with a mute," someone would add maliciously.)
It is known that Novsky was arrested again during the
terrible winter of 1937 and taken somewhere. The next year
we uncover his tracks in distant Insulrna. The last letter
written by him has the postmark of Kern, in the vicinity of
the Solovetski Islands.
The continuation and the end of Novsky's history is
based on Carl Fridrichovich (who mistakenly calls him
{ 108 J A TOMB FOR BORIS DAVIDOVICH
[ FOR FILIP DAVID J

Podolsky, instead of Dolsky); the setting: the distant, icy

North, Norilsk.
Novsky disappeared from the camp in a mysterious and
inexplicable way, most likely during one of those awful
storms when the tower guards, the firearms, and the German
shepherds were equally helpless. After the storm had died
down, the pursuers set off in search of the fugitive, relying on

the bloodthirsty instinct of their dogs. For three days the
camp inmates awaited in vain the command "Get ouel"; for
three days the furious foaming German shepherds struggled
to wrest free from their steel collars, dragging the exhausted
pursuers over deep snowdrifts. On the fourth day, a guard
spotted Novsky at the ironworks, unshaven and looking like
an apparition, warming himself next to the furnace. They
released the German shepherds. Following the howls of the
dogs, the pursuers burst into the foundry building. The fugi
tive was on the ladder at the top of the furnace, illuminated
by the flames. One eager guard began to climb up. As the
guard approached him, Novsky leaped into the boiling mass.
The guards saw him disappear before their very eyes; he
rose like a wisp of smoke, deaf to their commands, defiant, free
from German shepherds, from cold, from heat, from punish
ment, and from remorse.
This brave man died on November 21, 1937, at four
o'clock in the afternoon. He left a few cigarettes and a tooth
brush.
In late June 1956, the London Times, which still
seemed to believe in ghosts, announced that Novsky had been
seen in Moscow near the Kremlin wall. He was recognized
by his steel dentures. This news was carried by the entire
Western bourgeois press, eager for intrigue and sensation.
owi~
In the year of Our Lord 1330, on the twenty-third day of the
twelfth month, it came to the vigilant ears of the Most
Venerable Father in Christ, Monsignor Jacques, by the grace
of God Bishop of Pamiers, that Baruch David Neumann, a
refugee from Germany and a former Jew, had abandoned
the blindness and perfidy of Judaism and been converted to
the Christian faith; that he had received the sacrament of
holy baptism in the town of Toulouse at a time of persecu
tion, at the instigation of the devout Pastoureaux; and that
afterward, "like a dog who goggles his vomit," this Baruch
David Neumann used the opportunity-since in the town
of Pamiers he had lived like a Jew with other Jews-to
return to that sect offensive to God, and to his former Jewish
ways, so that His Excellency the Bishop ordered that he be
arrested and thrown in the dungeon.
Finally, he ordered that he be brought to him, and
Baruch Neumann appeared before him in the Bishop's great
hall, the left wing of which opened onto the torture chamber.